Meny

Theme article

History of crime fiction

By: Johan Wopenka

Depending upon how one wishes to define the concept ‘crime fiction’, it is possible to trace its history and roots back in time. When Dorothy L. Sayers compiled her comprehensive three-volume anthology Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror (1928–34) she started with two stories from the Old Testament, and when Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee (alias Ellery Queen) wrote their fundamental The Detective Short Story : A Bibliography (1942), they listed eight Chinese collections of short stories which are believed to have been written down between 600 A.D. and 1800 A.D., some of them containing stories based on an older, oral tradition.

Further reading

Literary figure

Pharoah Love

Gender: Male

He must be one of the most unlikely police officers in crime literature: an Afro-American and openly homosexual hipster in New York who drives a Jaguar, uses a trendy slang and has a preference for young, sexy, white men. George Baxt wrote five novels about Pharoah (spelt like that!) Love, who is a handsome, ready-witted and jazz-loving ‘cool cat’ of early middle-age and who became a favourite wit...

Further reading